When Islamist groups ran amok in parts of northern Mali last year, two Toronto academics watched the news on television in despair.

“It was a blow,” says Rod Tennyson, professor emeritus at the University of Toronto. “Mali is very important to our plan.”

Romila Verma, who teaches hydrology at U of T, says she wanted to cry. “It was one of the few stable countries in West Africa and I wondered if our plan will ever work.”

The “plan” is a grand one, even if it’s simplistic at its core: providing freshwater to the Sahel region through a pipeline that runs east-west in both directions.

According to the blueprint, two desalinating plants — one in Mauritania, the other in Djibouti — will pump water from the ocean and turn it into freshwater that will then be carried through 8,800 kilometres of pipeline to 11 countries: Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Sudan, Chad, Niger, Nigeria, Mali, Burkina Faso, Mauritania and Senegal. Reservoirs every few hundred kilometres will store water, and pumping stations will keep the water pressure going. The water can be used for drinking and for irrigation.

They call it the Trans Africa Pipeline project and estimate it would provide water to about 30 million people. The idea is to build the pipeline with donor money from the West and let the countries it runs though maintain it and run it.

The cost? About $20 billion.

“It is a solution to conflict in that region,” says Tennyson, a former director of U of T’s Institute of Aerospace Studies. “People migrate because there is no water . . . migration is leading to conflict in Sahel.”

Nestled between the vast Sahara desert and the African rainforest, the Sahel is the geographic zone that stretches for roughly 4,000 kilometres across arid shrub land. It gets erratic rainfall, about 100 to 600 millimetres a year, and it is in the middle of a long-term drought. The United Nations has recognized the region as one of the most prone to climate change.

Less than half the population of the Sahel has access to potable water and the demand is increasing with rapid population growth.

But the pipeline would have to travel through some conflict-ridden countries, where governance is questionable at best and warring factions can destabilize elected governments.

Is it a pipe dream?

Tennyson has been asked that question before. His answer has never changed, not even after the conflict in Mali broke out:

“It is viable,” he says, adding that the political situation won’t always be the same. “What is on offer is a solution to a long-term problem. So much instability can be resolved if there is better water supply.”

The pipeline will also provide employment and mitigate poverty, he said.

Tennyson says Islamists and other warring factions will not have any reason to oppose the pipeline “because everyone needs water . . . it is at the top of the hierarchy.” Ditto for the governments of the 11 African countries involved, he adds.

The first step is to bring them together, he says. The second is to raise the $20 billion needed for the project.

Verma says they are trying to raise $1 million for a conference where the 11 countries and international agencies will be invited to discuss the plan. The goal is to raise the money this year and hold the conference next year.

Verma and Tennyson say they are talking to some major corporations and some big names in Hollywood about raising the full $20 billion.

“There is interest, for sure,” says Verma. “We know this is not a quick turnaround; it will take time.”

Tennyson says he and his wife, Daphne Lavers, initially came up with the idea in 2005, around the time when rock star Bono was pushing the G8 countries to commit more aid funding to Africa.

At the time, Tennyson was involved in developing technology for monitoring the safety of water pipelines. “I understood pipelines and it occurred to me that a water pipeline was the solution to Africa,” he says.

He and his wife wrote up the first feasibility study. Then he met Verma, and in the past few years they have been joined by other academics at Imperial College in London, England, and AgriAssist, a Dutch agency that promotes rural development and food development.